This is the story of my nontraditional transformation from a Physics/Spanish/Chemistry/Math grad into a physician. I'm a proud member of the class of 2016 at Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine. The blog title will be edited to reflect the current stage of my transformation: Pre-Medical, Medical, Residential, then Doctoral. Read more about me in the My Story tab below. Enjoy!

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Saturday, November 3, 2012

My Movember Mustache

Much to Wife's dismay, I've signed up to participate in Movember - a worldwide movement to help raise awareness about men's health and funds for prostate cancer research. Here's the deal: guys these days typically don't talk about health issues, nor do they commonly sport mustaches. Let's face it - in the current United States' culture of fashion / style, they just seem dirty to most people, especially when on the face of a skinny white guy like me. Luckily for the Movember movement, that's the hidden magic. People automatically assume that you lost a bet or something, so they end up asking, "What's with the mustache?" And that's when we have the opportunity to explain about Movember!

Movember started in Australia with just four guys. You start the month off clean-shaven and grow your mustache for the entire month of November. People can create teams on the Movember website, through which they can accept donations. All proceeds go toward funding globally collaborative research into prostate cancer. Why is this so important? Basically, prostate cancer is to men what breast cancer is to women. Here are some little-known facts on prostate cancer, taken from the Movember website:

- 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime – a new case is diagnosed every 2.1 minutes. A man dies from prostate cancer every 18 minutes.- In 2012, 242,000 new cases of the disease will be diagnosed and 28,000 men will die of prostate cancer.- A man is 35% more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than a woman is to be diagnosed with breast cancer.- The incidence rates are nearly double for African American men.- If detected and treated early, prostate cancer has a 95 percent success rate.- While there are cases of prostate cancer showing up in younger men, it is recommended that men begin an annual screening at age 50 and at age 40 if there is a family history.

So, I've decided to team up with some of my MSU CHM classmates to get donations for Movember. Here's my donation page: http://us.movember.com/mospace/4894713. Please consider donating, even if it's only $1, as every little bit counts. In recent years, the Movember movement has raised more than $150,000,000 for cancer research. To help encourage said donations, I will be posting photos of my 'stache on here from time to time, so check back often this month! At the end, I'll put all of them into a time lapse for your viewing displeasure pleasure. Here's photo #1 with the first three days' growth:

@Jill - I am honored, both to be doing this and that you've shared this with me. Hopefully this will help raise some money to fund research that will result in future survival stories like your husband's.